Press Release, June 2023

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Kimmo Tuominen, Director General of the National Library of Finland (Kansalliskirjasto), succeeds Bas Savenije as Chair of the OAPEN Foundation Supervisory Board.

Photo: Marko Oja, National Library of Finland

Kimmo has previously held positions as university librarian at Helsinki University Library, director of the Jyväskylä University Library, head of reference and archival services at the Library of Parliament, and director of the Faculty of Arts Library, as well as several other elected positions in Finland and internationally, providing him with a broad range of experience well-suited as Chair of the OAPEN Foundation.

"OAPEN is a vital public knowledge infrastructure, a global service hub that promotes quality-controlled academic books and increases their visibility, discoverability, and accessibility. In the future, it becomes extremely important to enable immediate OA for all the published scholarly monographs and to safeguard bibliodiversity and multilingualism in scholarly communication.

I am very glad to assume the responsibility of the Chair and to work towards Open Access with the Board, the managing director and OAPEN’s skillful staff,” says Kimmo Tuominen.

At the same time, the governance structure of OAPEN has changed from a Board of Directors to a Supervisory Board. This change mainly affects the balance of responsibility between the Board and the Director, who has now become Managing Director. OAPEN remains a not-for-profit Dutch Foundation (‘Stichting’) like it has always been.

OAPEN Managing Director, Niels Stern says, “I look very much forward to working with Kimmo Tuominen as the new Chair of the OAPEN Supervisory Board. Kimmo has an excellent profile and experience to ensure good supervision and strong support for our expanding organisation and its mission. I also want to thank our retired Chair, former Director General of the KB – National Library of the Netherlands, Bas Savenije, who has steered OAPEN with great enthusiasm and professionalism for more than 12 years. His support to OAPEN has been invaluable and we wish him all the best for his continued retirement.”

OAPEN’s mission is to promote and support the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. We are looking forward to receiving Kimmo and the Supervisory Board’s support and stewardship of OAPEN’s future as we continue our work towards achieving this goal.

Kimmo Tuominen assumed the position of Board Chair of the OAPEN Foundation on 9 June 2023.